The
AutoEMC.net newsletter is a text only e-mail newsletter with hyperlinks to
stories or items of interest noted in brief within the following text. If you
have any items for inclusion or ideas on how to improve this service please send
them by return e-mail.

This
quarter we have a lot on information in the newsletter and would like to thank
all those who contributed. Please keep the information coming to the usual
address; news@autoemc.net.

Automotive
EMC Conferences

Automotive
EMC 2004 Conference

The Automotive EMC 2004
conference is planned to run alongside the EMC UK 2004 event being organised by Nutwood
UK Ltd,
the publishers of "EMC and Compliance Journal", at Newbury Racecourse. The
"Call for Papers" is now launched and interested authors and
presenters are invited to consider providing a synopsis for consideration at
this years event (synopsis deadline 9th April 2004).

www.autoemc.net/Conference/2004/CallforPapers.htm

For those interested in attending
rather than presenting, some delegate information is available and booking forms
have been placed on-line. Once the agenda is finalised (expected 30th
April) this will also be be posted on the site.

You can keep up-to-date with the
progress of the EMC UK 2004 conference and exhibition at their information site;
www.emcuk.info

Automotive EMC
2003

The best paper
award from last years Automotive EMC 2003 conference, as voted by the delegates, was
presented to Peter Hartnett of
Transparent Engineering at another seminar he was providing on "Vehicle 42 Volt Electrical Systems",
a review of the seminar is available (see Design section of this
newsletter). A press release has been issued on the award presentation as
part of the build up for the Automotive EMC 2004 conference.

The Automotive EMC
2003 conference
proceedings on CD-ROM are available to purchase at £25+VAT while the stock of
overprints last. Once the overprint stock is exhausted the proceedings
will only be produced to order and the cost will increase (price expected to
double). A PDF document of the abstracts from the 2003 conference is also
available as a free download so that prospective buyers can get some idea of the
content of the proceedings before purchasing. The order form and abstracts
document are available via the 2003 conference link;

The IEEE EMC
society held an Automotive EMC event at the Ford Conference and Event
centre in Michigan in February 2004 (apologies for the incorrect date shown in
the January bulletin). A review of the conference has been promised for the AutoEMC.net
site and although it has missed the March deadline we hope to include it in the
next newsletter.

SAE World Congress

By the time many
of our readers receive this newsletter they will either be at the SAE World
Congress in Detroit or have just returned from the event. Any attending
reader who would like to provide a review of this event please get in
touch. The review can be your personal account of the event or posted
anonymously. (Send to news@autoemc.net.)

Standards

EU Automotive EMC
Directive

We have had what
we consider something of a coup; we received from a European government
transport agency the full draft proposal of the new European Automotive EMC
directive to amend (effectively replace) 95/54/EC. This is a large (2.1MB)
PDF file and it should be noted that this is still to be ratified and currently
does not carry legislative backing, but we (the Automotive EMC network) expect
changes to the document will be minor before ratification and it is the best
indication of what new tests will be required for all new passenger cars and
components sold for use in Europe in the near future (adoption of this directive
is expected in 2004, next meeting of the committee is in May).

We have taken our
time in placing the above on the website as we checked out the situation with
respect to copyright and web publication. The AutoEMC.net team believe
there are no issues preventing our placing the document on the site, but we
would recommend interested parties download their own copy in case we are
mistaken in our assumption and have to remove the file at a later date.

Ford Specification
Changes

The recent changes
to the Ford EMC Specification (up-issued from AB to AC) has been kindly reviewed
for the Automotive EMC network by Alex McKay of 3C Test Ltd. The review
covers the changes that will effect both component supplier and test service
providers alike and highlights just how significant some of the changes have
been in this recent iteration of this well known and well used specification.

The SAE Surface
Vehicle Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) Standards Manual 2004 Edition is
just released. This replaces the 1998 edition of same title. The
price has doubled since 1998 (now $199), but this edition includes 21 revised
standards and 3 new documents.

The Automotive EMC
network would be more than pleased to receive a review of this manual update,
especially comparing it to the 1998 edition and in light of recent updates to
CISPR-12, CISPR-25 and ISO 10605. (Send to news@autoemc.net.)

R&TTE
Compliance with e-marking Requirements

The radio and
telecommunications terminal equipment (R&TTE) directive often comes into
conflict with the requirements of the automotive directive (95/54/EC) and
suppliers of R&TTE approved equipment feel that the automotive industry is
being protectionist in its insistence that products with R&TTE approval and
CE mark need to further comply with the e-marking requirements. An open
letter from Olly Wheaton, Chairman TC-ERM at ETSI has been published requesting
R&TTE equipment suppliers to lobby for CE marked product to be exempt from
additional e-marking
requirement, this letter was originally written in 2002 but has been
re-issued in January 2004.

The AutoEMC.net
team strongly disagree with this proposition and feel that we should equally
suggest suppliers in the automotive field may want to reply to this letter
arguing for the retention of the e-marking scheme in addition to CE marking,
especially for
R&TTE products.

EMC Test

Our Automotive EMC
Test Services page sponsor, 3C Test Ltd, have appointed a new managing director,
Barry Yardley, with many years experience in the Automotive field obtained at
MIRA and TRW.

3C Test Ltd also recently gained full
Technical Service status for e-mark testing.

We have
experienced significant interest from Test Houses in being listed on our site
and the number of listed companies on the Automotive EMC Test page have
increased by a few and the General EMC test service provider numbers have
doubled since the last newsletter.

42V Powernet is
still "just around the corner" it seems, or is it? There was a very informative free seminar
in January on the topic that did not make the usual "its' on its way"
statement. The seminar was organised by the IMechE Automobile Division, Luton Branch and IEE Bedfordshire & Hertfordshire
Branch, a
review is available for those that were unable to attend this event.

Will fuel cell and
other hybrid technologies displace 42V before it even gets off the ground?
Ballard Power Systems would certainly hope so as they are already making
significant in-roads in the mass-transit market fitting fuel cell power systems
to metro busses across the world, most recently in Australia.

http://www.ballard.com/pdfs/22%20Perth%20Order_.PDFLINK EXPIRED

The AutoEMC.net
newsletter would be interested in carrying an article on fuel cell technology
for vehicles, if any of our readers have anything suitable please send it to the
usual address; news@autoemc.net.

Learning
Opportunities

A general seminar
on automotive systems has been organised by Hitex to be held at the University
of Warwick, UK on 17th March. This is a commercial event, costing £50,
more details can be found on the following page;

Those involved in
Automotive Electrical design at the PCB level may be interested in the
"Designers Learning Symposium" being held by the IPC between the 10th
and 14th May in the UK. Check out the link for more details.

http://dc.ipc.org/dlu-uk/dls-uk.htm

LINK EXPIRED (event itself was postponed
to September)

Papers

We have detected
an increase in the awareness of Automotive EMC in other journals and have added
a few more links to their articles. We would especially like to draw our readers
attention to the article on the testing complexities of automotive systems that
appeared in the "EMC and Compliance Journal" written by staff at MIRA.

We have seen a
large increase in our own download traffic and have had to increase the website
bandwidth to cope. If you have a paper or article on automotive design
and/or EMC then please consider letting our site host your work and expose it to
a wide audience of interested professionals. To have your work listed
please provide either the original in PDF or WORD format or the URL of your own
host to papers@autoemc.net.

Miscellaneous

Website has had a
major facelift, we hope you like the results and any comments, positive or
otherwise, are always welcome, please send to: news@autoemc.net.
We have also purchased the domain www.AutoEMC.com, hence this also now points to
the Automotive EMC network.

Our plan to start
a discussion forum has unfortunately come to nothing due to incompatibility with
our HTML generating software and our service provider server software, plus our
lack of time and experience in internet technologies. We
are looking for an alternative using a web based forum service such as Yahoo!
discussions. Any input would be welcome on who does what and which are
easiest to use.

Page
Sponsorship

The sponsorship of pages
is still available, anyone interested should check out the item on our web statistics
for this first year of operation and the price list via the link therein. The
data has been updated since the December newsletter to include the results for
December 2003.

If you have failed
to receive recent newsletters this may be due to your e-mail server settings rejecting the newsletter as SPAM. We
have experienced a number of rejections recently (just under 50) and
these subscribers have been removed from our database as we can not deal with
subscribers individually. Therefore if you wish to continue to receive the
newsletter please ensure your e-mail SPAM software will accept AutoEMC.net
traffic. Those who can not change their e-mail server settings will have to
visit the website to read the newsletter or may wish to set up a personal e-mail
at one of the free on-line providers (e.g. Yahoo! or Hotmail) and subscribe
using this alternative address.

MyDoom Virus

We, along with
most of the e-mail and internet world, were bombarded with "MyDoom" virus e-mails
towards the
end of January and early February. If you sent any information to the site
during this period it is possible it may have been deleted by accident along
with the 1000+ spoof e-mails generated by MyDoom infected machines with the
AutoEMC.net contact details in their address book. We did not get infected
and have a double safety net on the site for this type of attack, however, we
guess many of our subscribers may have succumbed to this and wish them luck in
recovering from this futile act of e-vandalism.

Newsletter

Old
issues of the newsletter are available on the website for those who are new
subscribers.

For the first time
since the site started last May, the number of subscribers has remained static
at around 1200, with new subscribers and unsubscribers (including dead e-mail
addresses) being equal at around 50 since the last newsletter issue.

If you
have any relevant news you would like to add to the next newsletter please send
contributions to: news@AutoEMC.net.

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